Comprehensive Lifecycle Assessment and Recommendations for
Engineering Transformations (CLARET)
Previous Track Record
Brian Collins CB, FREng (PI) is Professor of Engineering Policy at UCL,
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/steapp/people/collins with expertise in information exploitation in modernising
national infrastructure, particularly in transport and energy. He became the Department for Transport’s
Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) in 2006 and the CSA for BIS in 2009. He is PI of the £3.4m EPSRC/ESRC
International Centre for Infrastructure Finance (ICIF) project to investigate the future financing of
infrastructure and Co-I on the £6.2M EPSRC Programme Grant “Transforming the Engineering of Cities”
(EP/J017698/1). He was a member of the CST study group “A national infrastructure for the 21st Century”,
is chair of the Programme Advisory Board for the RCUK Digital Economy programme, and was the founding
chair of the Engineering and Interdependency Expert Group for Infrastructure UK within HM Treasury.
Professor Nick Tyler CBEi (Co-PI) is the Chadwick Professor of Civil Engineering at UCL
(http://iris.ucl.ac.uk/research/personal/index?upi=NATYL84) and works with clinical, engineering, social
science, arts and humanities researchers to explore exactly how a person interacts with their immediate
environment. Nick has a strong involvement with various governments in relation to city development: UK
PI on a Chinese research and application project “Low Carbon City Development” (£2 billion) in Guangzhou,
Shanghai and Nanyang; developing and communicating the evidence to support national policy with the
Peruvian, Panamanian, Cuban and Colombian governments in relation to accessible low carbon transport
(UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office). Research Council funding: PI on several EPSRC projects, Co-I on the
£6.2m EPSRC Programme Grant “Transforming the Engineering of Cities”, a Co-I on an EPSRC project to
develop a new generation of hybrid buses, a Co-I on ICIF. Professor Hélène Joffe (Professor of Psychology,
UCL) is a Social and Health Psychologist with research interests in risk and aspirations; theories of how
publics engage with social issues; and climate change. She is the lead editor of Cities at Risk: Living with
Perils in the 21st Century (Springer) and Risk and 'the other' (CU Press), is CoI of the EPSRC’s EPICentre
(studying Japanese, Turkish and North American representations of earthquakes in highly seismic zones),
EPICentre’s Challenging Risk (conducting an intervention to increase earthquake preparedness), EPSRC’s
Transforming the Engineering of Cities project and has been PI on ESRC and other grants concerned with
how publics engage with social issues. She won the Lloyds Science of Risk prize for the best international
risk paper of 2013. She is an advisor to the UK government on Behaviour and Communications regarding
Pandemic Influenza (The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Behaviour and Communication Sub-Group).
Professor Francesca Medda is Professor of Applied Economics and Finance in the QASER (Quantitative &
Applied Spatial Economics Research) Laboratory in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic
Engineering at UCL. QASER has an extensive research portfolio with funding from bodies such as EPSRC, the
European Investment Bank, World Bank, Ernst & Young and the EU. She leads the Economic Viability
research theme in the Transforming the Engineering of Cities Programme Grant. Her work to date has been
developed according to two main outputs: (1) the construction of a portfolio structuring model for the
combination of investments in cities where environmental and social impacts, together with financial
returns, are taken into consideration, (2) the definition of a model of multi-layer networks in order to
examine the effects of a city’s natural assets in its growth and sustainable development.
Professor Rachel Cooper (Co-PI) is Director, Imagination@Lancaster, a design-led research lab addressing
the future of products, places and services at Lancaster University. She has led over 20 EPSRC, (including
three research grants on cities over a period of ten years), Home Office, DTI and Design Council grants, and
researches: cross-disciplinary design; design management; design policy; design in the built environment;
design against crime; and socially responsible design. With >120 papers, she has undertaken research on all
aspects of the design process from requirements capture to evidence-based design decision-making and
design management. She is currently a lead expert advisor of the Foresight Future of Cities programme and
a non-executive director of the Future cities Catapult. She is also currently advising the Chief Scientific
advisor on security and defence in relation to the ‘internet of things’ related to products and cities.
Professor John Urry BA, MA (Economics), PhD (Sociology), all Cambridge University. He is now
Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University. He is a Founding Academician, Academy of
Social Sciences. John Urry chaired UK RAE Panels (1996, 2001), was a Science Expert on a UK Government
Foresight Programme (2005-6), was a member of the Science and Engineering Review of DfT (2009), and
was co-author of Electric Vehicles (Royal Academy of Engineering 2010). Currently he holds grants from
EPSRC, ESRC (2) and Foresight. His c40 books and special issues include Mobilities (Polity 2007),
Aeromobilities (Routledge 2009), After the Car (Polity 2009), Mobile Lives (Routledge 2010), The Tourist
Gaze 3.0 (Sage 2011), Climate Change and Society (Routledge 2011), Mobilities. New Perspectives on
Transport and Society (2011), Societies beyond Oil (Zed 2013), Energising Society (2014) and Offshoring
(Polity 2014). He is founding Co-editor of the leading journal Mobilities (Routledge). Twitter @johnurry
Prof Chris Rogers is PI of the programme grant Transforming the Engineering of Cities to deliver Societal
and Planetary Wellbeing (EPJ017698, £6.2m, 2012-17), and was PI of the SUE1 Birmingham Eastside
(£1.1m, 2004-08) and SUE2 Urban Futures (£3.5m, 2008-12) consortia. He is a member of the Foresight
Future of Cities Lead Expert Group and the Academic Lead of the Future Urban Living UoB Policy
Commission. He provided leadership in delivering impact from the SUE Programme as PI of the SUE Visioninto-Action Research Fellows Conference (GRC511115, 2004-05) and as Co- PI of SUE Research Dialogues
(EPH002235, 2010). He is PI of Assessing the Underworld (EPK021659, £5.9m, 2013-17), having been PI of
the Mapping the Underworld programme (£4.5m, 2004-12), which derived from an EPSRC-funded
Engineering Programme Network in Trenchless Technology (EPC547330,2001-04). He is a CI of iBUILD
(EPK012398, £3.5m, 2013-17) exploring infrastructure interdependencies and novel business models, was
PI of a Cross-Disciplinary Feasibility Award on Critical Local Infrastructures (EPI016163, 2011-12) and is CI of
a Basic Technology project creating a gravity gradient sensor to map underground space (GG-TOP,
EPI036877, £2.4m, 2011-15). Editor of Engineering Sustainability (2007-2011) and an editor of Tunnelling
and Underground Space Technology (1996-2013), he chairs the Institution of Civil Engineers Innovation &
Research Panel. Professor Jon Sadler (Co-I) holds a chair in Biogeography and Ecology at the University of
Birmingham, where his research focus is on people-environment interactions in urban areas. His research
portfolio amounts to 13 million in funding derived from UKRC (NERC, EPSRC, ESRC), charities (Leverhulme
Trust, Big Lottery, UK Agencies (EA, Natural England, Countryside Council for Wales) and private industry.
He was CI on the SUE1&2 grants focusing on ecological services in cities, 3 NERC-URGENT grants (urban
biodiversity, urban habitats and urban rivers) and an EU grant on sustainable urban drainage and brown
(biodiversity) roofs. A UK REF 2014 panel member, he has published >120 outputs including
interdisciplinary studies of animal ecology and ecological function in cities, especially in respect to the
disruption of those functions by human activity and the importance of ecological services for city dwellers.
He edits the Journal of Biogeography, is on the European Geophysical Union’s Hydroecology steering group
and a Trustee of two UK wildlife charities.
Professor AbuBakr Bahaj is the head of Energy and Climate Change Division at the University of
Southampton with expertise spanning energy generation and demand reductions with special emphasis on
the built environment. He has fostered a culture of cross-disciplinary research across the energy field,
which has produced >250 publications and, over the last 7 years, a research portfolio in access of £18
million. He is the academic lead of the recently awarded £10.3 million Ofgem’s LCNF project to support
network grid investment. He is also the Chief Scientific Advisor to Southampton City Council and was
recently voted by the Science Council as one of the UK’s top 100 practicing scientists. Professor Jane
Falkingham is a specialist in demographic change and its social and economic welfare implications with a
particular focus on ageing. She is the Director of the ESRC Centre for Population Change and PI of the EPSRC
Care Life Cycle Programme. Her work on poverty and health dynamics is embedded within government
agencies such as DFiD. Dr Patrick James is a specialist in micro-generation and urban energy systems. His
work is at the interface of technology and people incorporating studies of national and international
standing in micro-wind, micro-CHP, solar-thermal, photovoltaics, building refurbishment and urban futures.
His work has been used by numerous institutions and policy makers including DECC, CIBSE, Scottish
Executive, Carbon Trust, ICE and the European Commission. Dr Milena Buchs is a senior lecturer in
sociology and social policy. Her research focuses on the issues surrounding inequality and climate change,
as well as practice change, in particular in relation to energy and low carbon lives. She led the ESRC study
‘Who emits most? The distribution of CO2 emissions across UK households’, was co-director of
‘environment’ within the Third Sector Research Centre and is currently co-I of the ESRC study ‘Community
based initiatives in energy saving’.
Case for Support
1. Background and context
CLARET is an outcome of the EPSRC Programme Grant ‘Transforming the Engineering of Cities’ (TEC)ii, which
is undertaking a radical re-visioning of how we engineer the world’s cities so they become fit for the needs
of future generations, in the context of rapid changes at the global scale. To achieve this TEC is providing
new approaches to appraising and designing future cities.
One part of TEC is the development of a city analysis framework which will help city leaders understand the
challenges posed by a radical view of what cities could be and how they could function. This will be based
on re-visioning a city to maximise wellbeing and optimise low carbon living. TEC is also producing new
insights into the synthesis of social and governance aspects of cities with environmental and technological
perspectives. In doing so they re-vision the engineering required to create sustainable urban environments.
To capitalise on this work these new approaches need to be brought to the attention of city and national
governments and those who implement developments throughout the UK and elsewhere in the world. An
initial attempt at providing more dynamic support for city/national officials has been made for the
Colombian Government as part of a project on low carbon Colombian cities funded by the UK FCO (Tyler).
This provides a starting point in making guidance for practitioners available in a helpful and dynamic way,
but the advances being made in TEC both necessitate and enable this approach to be taken much further to
provide greater impactiii . This is the purpose of CLARET.
The output of CLARET (Comprehensive Lifecycle Assessment and Recommendations for Engineering
Transformations) will be a body of knowledge with dissemination enabled by technology that will provide
guidance for use by government policy makers (national and local) and public and private city decisionmakers. It will enable them to access the highest level of expertise on which to make urban design and
policy decisions. This will help city governments ensure that their cities are fit for purpose in the 21st and
22nd centuries in conditions of rapid multi-contextual change. This will also provide a new model for the
delivery of national Government guidance regarding areas other than cities; the development of guidance
for sustainable and adaptive cities is suitably rich to provide a useful example for others to follow.
2. (Inter)National Importance
In addition to TEC, EPSRC has funded programmes specifically related to cities through its Sustainable
Urban Environments initiative phases 1, 2 and 3; and Adaptation and Resilience in the Context of Change
Network (ARCC). In addition it funds highly complementary projects on infrastructure (e.g. ITRC
(EP/I01344X/2), The Innovation Knowledge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction at Cambridge
University (EP/I019308/1), ICIF (EP/K012347/1)); energy (e.g. CBES (EP/I02929X/1), Centre for Sustainable
Energy Use in Food Chains (EP/K011820/1), DEMAND (EP/K011723/1), RESNET (EP/I035757)); transport
(e.g. Centre for Sustainable Road Freight Transport (EP/K00915X/1), Railway Track for the 21st Century
(EP/H044949/1)); the built environment (e.g. Adaptable Suburbs (EP/I001212/1); and Co-design of the built
environment for mobility in later life (EP/K03748X/1)) amongst others
In addition to those funded by EPSRC, there are a number of research-led initiatives exploring cities and
liveability. Of particular interest are the Future of Cities Foresight programme led by BIS, which is taking a
long-term look at how UK cities can contribute to economic growth, taking into account wellbeing, equity
and social inclusion. Also, the TSB-funded Future Cities catapult, which focuses upon joining-up how cities
operate for improving quality of life, strengthening the economy and protecting the environment, with
Glasgow as its demonstrator city. In these initiatives, pathways to policy implementation are fostered by
using technology and science to illustrate possible futures. Non EPSRC-led research initiatives that focus
upon underpinning science, demonstration and facilitation between research, business and policy include
Biophilic Cities (Summit Foundation); Centre for Low Carbon Futures (various funding sources); EU
Association of Smart Cities (EU); Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities (University of Oxford); LSE Cities
( Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society); MIT CoLab and Sense-able Cities Lab (MIT); Reconciling
Adaptation, Mitigation and Sustainable Development for Cities - RAMSES (EU); and Transitioning Towards
Urban Resilience and Sustainability - TURAS (EU).
As cities increasingly rely upon outsourced competencies to move towards liveability there is a growth in
business-led initiatives, such as: AECOM Global Cities Institute, Cisco Smart City Framework, IBM Smarter
Cities, Siemens Infrastructure and Cities, and WSP Designing Future Cities. In addition, a number of
independent initiatives have grown: Centre for Cities, Center for Neighborhood Technology – CNT, Centre
for Sustainable Energy - CSE, Citymart, New Cities Foundation, Next City, Project for Public Spaces - PPS,
RSA City Growth Commission, Urban Sustainability Research Coordination Network - RCN, and the Santa Fe
Institute. Policymakers are developing city initiatives as cities are increasingly recognised as important
agents of change: Foresight Review on the Theme of Future Cities (UK), C40 Cities Programme, City
Protocol, Core Cities (UK), Covenant of Mayors, European Sustainable Development Network (ESDN),
Global City Indicators Facility, and the World City Mayors Forum.
CLARET crosses seven of EPSRC's 12 funding themes: Digital economy (e.g. Sustainable Society,
Communities and Culture, New Economic Models), Energy (e.g. Sustainable Energy Vectors), Engineering
(e.g. Built Environment, Complexity Science, Energy Networks, Engineering Design, Resource Efficiency,
Sustainable Land Management, Whole Energy Systems), Global Uncertainties (e.g. Natural Resources), ICT
(e.g. Databases, Engineering Design, Graphics and Visualisation, Information Systems), LWEC (e.g.
Infrastructure, Water), and Manufacturing the Future (e.g. Working in the UK Innovation Landscape,
Sustainable Industrial Systems, Innovative Production Processes).
3. Methodology and structure
Within the CLARET project, we will develop exemplars as the
starting point for the research so that we can maintain the
appropriate depth, rather than attempt to cover every aspect of
future city operation at a more superficial level. So the CLARET
‘Book’ will adopt a Transformational Engineering approach to
focus work emanating from TEC and other research into an
innovative form of guidance for people who govern, manage, live
or work in cities. The aims and objectives described in the Je-S
form lead to five interlinked topic groups, which, in combination,
structure the CLARET book: People & Places (Aspirations, Senses,
Urban Form), Policy (Governance, Finance), Practice (using Energy Figure 1 The CLARET Book is a combination of
as an example), and Transformational Engineering to combine all themes, examples and processes
of these. The lead investigators are identified in each case.
3.1
People and Places (Tyler)
The interactions between places and people are supremely complex. In order to understand how to make
people-place interactions more sustainable for future generations, we have clustered them into three
interlinked themes:
1. the Aspirations for cities of the future that link to improvement of wellbeing,
2. the Senses and perceptions by which people interact with the environment around them and
3. the Urban form and Mobilities needed to link their chosen activities together, by which cities make
people’s aspirations achievable.
3.1.1 Aspirations (Joffe) – Months 1-18
Vision: To conduct a nationally representative survey and segmentation of members of the British public to
identify the types of ‘aspirational city’ people aspire to live in.
Previous research: Surprisingly little research has investigated what types of cities member of the British
public aspire to live in. Academic research typically investigates city aspirations as they relate to urban
design and housing preferencesiv. Broader scale ‘recipe books’ of best practice, as defined by engineers,
policy experts and practitioners, highlight the transformations future cities will require to become ‘smart’
and ‘resilient’v while other surveys explore the current quality of life in cities for people across the EU and
beyondvi. Nothing is available, however, which puts people’s specific desires and aspirations for future cities
centre stage.
Novelty: A systematic, robust, empirically grounded survey of British public aspirations for cities of the
future has never been conducted. Questions are derived from a detailed qualitative study of aspirational
cities (conducted within the TEC project by these researchers) in a matched sample in three UK cities.
Researchers and practitioners have placed considerable energy into conceptualising future cities, but not
directly gauged the perspective of the lay public.
What we will do: A nationally representative survey, with a segmentation analysis on 2,000 UK dwellers to
identify the types of aspirational city (e.g. the “friendly” city, the “green” city) the UK public aspire to live in,
but also how prevalent these city types are for different demographic groups (e.g. for young professionals,
retirees).
Output: a clear statement of the aspirational views of the UK population in relation to the types of city in
which they aspire to live in the future, taking into account that this is likely to include multiple and
conflicting forms and providing the basis for similar studies of other populations in the future.
3.1.2 Senses (Sadler) – Months 1-36
Vision: to improve the liveability of cities through enhanced sensescapes and taskscapes that can help
people to imagine and realise new configurations of space and movement within future cities.
Previous research: Little is known about the ways in which people sense their immediate environment in
relation to urban space and mobility, with these issues often dealt with separately by researchers and
practitioners, reinforced by narrow conceptualisations of ‘senses’, ‘mobilities’vii and of ‘urban spaces’viii.
Novelty: to develop an interdisciplinary analytical and methodological framework that better understands
the senses by which the human body interprets its environment and integrate this framework in
investigating urban spaces and mobilities for developing future liveable cities. Central here is to see cities as
a set of taskscapesix and sensescapesx, an array of spaces comprised by multiple and often overlapping
social practices of leisure, exercise, shopping, working and socialising (taskscapes), as well as combinations
of senses (sensescapes). Robinson (2009)xi discusses an expanded set of senses and in our approach we
expand the sensescapes to explore a less western-focused approach including more than the five usually
understood in Western cultures. We include the sense of pain, balance, justice, harmony and history.
What we will do: We will create a systematic mapping and analysis of those particular mobilities, practices
and senses whose diverse intersections and synchronisations are important for re-imagining wellbeingmaximised urban spaces. In doing so, we aim to discover important links between urban form and social
function, along with practical information on where and when sense and taskscapes can be re-engineered’
by city authorities, companies, NGOs and people in general so as to enhance wellbeing. Bringing to bear
Tyler’s work on the neurology of stimulus-response processes in the context of the multisensorial analysis
of the urban environment will enable us to understand how stimulus design can affect people in different
ways and, in combination with a particular urban form (Section 3.1.3), the interactions between people and
the urban environment.
Output: a multisensory model that encapsulates how people sense their immediate environment.
3.1.3 Mobilities and Urban form (Urry) – Months 1-36
Vision: We seek a radical transformation in how cities are socio-technically engineered and how this
translates into configurations of urban form which facilitate people’s capacity for ‘flourishing’ but taking
into account impacts on other liveability dimensions (i.e. resource use).
Previous research: The garden cities of Howard, the modernist approaches of Le Corbusier and the grand
urban plans of the 1980s all determined the urban form on the basis of some preconception of how people
would want to live. The symbiotic link between urban form and mobilityxii has been developed so that in
the main we have moved on from concepts such as Predict and Provide (PAP) with its emphasis on capacity
provision, towards Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and Traditional Neighbourhood Development
(TND). These have shifted the direction of planning objectives from urban redesign, or demand
management, for motor vehicles towards (PAP) residential and commercial urban development which
favours public transport use (TOD) or the consolidation of local neighbourhoods (TND). However each of
these is driven primarily by a model of transport). Othersxiii approach urban form by making the city more
suitable for social life and engendering a sense of wellbeing amongst the population. In that same direction
the classification of potential innovations (e.g. slow, collective ownership, enhanced localisation, digital and
post-carbon forms) joins mobilities and social processes at the centre of innovation processesxiv.
Novelty: We will analyse the urban form and mobilities of cities using Tyler’s ‘5-cities model’xv, in which
high level objectives are set which are driven by the way in which the city could be able to support
personal, and thence societal, wellbeing.
What we will do: We will study cities as diverse as London, Bristol, Medellin, Havana, Portland, Perth,
Tokyo and Shanghai, which have very different urban forms and ways of living. By employing an array of
mobile research methodsxvi, we will examine whether certain cities are particularly effective at generating
mobility innovations for low carbon outcomes and improved wellbeing, whether and how these
innovations in urban form or mobilities can be scaled up or fail, and how isolated innovations can link
together to form new systems. Through the analysis of mobility innovations occurring around the world we
will identify, document, assess, publicise and generalise Sites of Mobility Innovation to set up an
authoritative Observatory of such SMIs. By studying and comparing these alongside their cultural lives, we
will develop a model for city development which will test the 5-cities approach to see if it can deliver an
improvement in both personal and societal wellbeing. We will combine this with research on urban form to
see how this encourages different outcomes in terms of liveability and how the hardware of the city affects
and is affected by the people who live, work and visit it. This will then complement the aspirations and
sensescapes work (Sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 respectively) to determine how the urban form interacts with
people’s aspirations and how it can play on different sensory capabilities to deliver improved liveability.
Output: A model of socio-technical understanding of people’s approach to mobility articulated within a
multidimensional urban model to generate a range of possible future mobility innovations.
3.2 Practice - Energy (Bahaj) – Months 1-36
Vision: To determine if (1) a decrease of the energy consumed arising from people’s daily practices, and
engineering interventions relates to a decrease of individual or collective wellbeing and health, especially in
urban areas and (2) this varies for different types of fuel or fuel use and which social groups are at greatest
risk of experiencing a deterioration of wellbeing or health as a result of energy reduction.
Previous research: Research on energy use and wellbeing has so far focused on issues of fuel poverty and
the relationship between modes of travel and health (e.g. positive health implications of walking and
cycling)xvii. An on-going study of fabric retrofit in social housing in Portsmouth by the applicants
demonstrates that the heating regime of poor households is already highly constrained by financial
circumstances, so insulating these properties will deliver little in terms of carbon or energy savings – only a
third of that predicted by a standard building physics analysis – but the retrofit is anticipated to improve
thermal comfort and therefore wellbeing and health.xviii
Novelty: So far very little is known about the relationship between changes in energy use and
wellbeing/health or variations of these relationships across different types of fuel or social groups (and
their income). We propose to look at this through (i) a critical energy-carbon-wellbeing evaluation of
numerous city-wide, council-led energy based interventions, (ii) a comprehensive desk-based study
exploiting existing national datasets in energy, demographics and transport, and (iii) linking these to
address impacts at city and national scales, for future policy intervention in the energy-carbon-wellbeing
axis.
What we will do: Energy and equity studies will form the basis of the majority of fieldwork evidence having
particular emphasis on the interrelationship and potential tension between energy consumption/carbon
and wellbeing. We will assess a range of energy interventions exploring their differing impacts on
households addressing energy, wellbeing and equity. As indicated above, we know the theoretical and
actual carbon impacts and our planned overarching analysis will assess the wellbeing change engendered
by actual and modelled interventions. Case studies which have already been identified include: a 500 unit
DECC social housing boiler upgrades in dwellings in Portsmouth, ECO social housing retrofit of 829
households in 42 mixed buildings (2013), planned interventions in 2700 properties in Southampton. We will
also examine the outcomes and outputs from these projects through a wider study to be undertaken on
national datasets that will provide understanding on (a) measured energy use at the Lower Super Output
Area and Local Authority levels for domestic electricity and gas consumption as well as transport fuel use;
(b) population characteristics at the same levels from the Census 2011; (c) individual and household
characteristics (including further proxies for energy use) from the Longitudinal British Household Panel and
its successor, Understanding Society (1991-ongoing, current sample size ca. 40K UK households). The
combination of these studies will provide the evidence needed at scale for the Claret Book.
Output: A well-informed model and guidelines for energy use / wellbeing value in the city context, taking into
account the way in which people respond to supposedly energy-saving innovations in ‘their’ urban space.
3.3
Policy and Governance (Collins) – Months 1-36
Vision: To formulate robust and sustainable systems of governance and finance for cities of the future,
which acknowledge the co-existence and interdependence of multiple scales of policy influence and
budgetary control and take account of broad, contextual – evolutionary and disruptive – drivers of change.
Previous Research: Previous researchxix has developed a portfolio structuring tool for the top-down
structuring and de-risking of investments in cities, allowing greater emphasis to be placed on social and
environmental as well as monetary benefits and this has informed our proposal to research financial
models that are specifically designed to work within the context of new governance models. Our current
research suggests that it is highly unlikely that one size will ‘fit all’ in governing the future of liveable cities
and hence more research as described here is required to understand the opportunities and limitations –
structural, operational and financial – intrinsic in the various governance options as well as external drivers
of change and their implications for policy makers.
Novelty: The treatment of the interdependence of finance and governance models and the need for
adaptation of both in the face of innovation and contextual change. The success and sustainability of cities
is strongly anchored in their capacity to attract investments and to 'make money', not just through the
fiscal system but also through proactive economic growth. Multi-scalar governance responsibilities and
multi-layered finance structures require new models, as they demand an ability to manage diversity,
complexity and uncertainty.
What we will do: We will apply a blend of methods (desk research, case studies, interviews with policy
makers, process analysis and Adaptive System Modellingxx) to research the benefits and resilience as well as
the limitations and vulnerabilities of different models and scales of governance. This will enable us to build
a model that describes the management of interactions and interdependencies between scales of
governance. This is supported by an evidence base and case studies for use in appraising governance and
financing options. We propose to create a system grounded on the principle of flexible budget sharing and
cross-sectoral financial management in accordance with urban governance solutions. This will involve
developing mechanisms for investment in grass-roots initiatives to complement the traditional top-down
approach in order to foster private sector intervention and garner wide acceptance for innovative and
sustainable solutions from all city stakeholders, including civic, entrepreneurial and Third Sector.
Output: A clear model that describes the impacts of different models of governance on leadership and
management processes that are exercised at different scales (international, national, city, local etc.) and
improves capability to manage across varying and overlapping temporal, geographical and budgetary
scales.
3.4
Transformational Engineering (Tyler) – Months 1-36
Vision: To combine People, Places, Practice and Process themes to evaluate a city in terms of its
functionalities as expressed in terms of achievement of wellbeing
Previous research: The transformational engineering approach is to make use of the Value Engineering
principles developed in the 1960s by Milesxxi to analyse the functionalities of a city in a comprehensive
Value-based model. Value engineering states that Value is the relationship between Functionality and Cost.
Tylerxxii extends this to include a deeper definition of what is meant by both functionality and cost, so that
Value becomes the relationship between Achievement and Aspiration, with the use of resources (not only
financial) as a modifier. In this framework, it is necessary to determine the Functionality of each aspect of
the city environment according to its ability to deliver improvement of wellbeing as determined by the
multisensorial perceptions and aspirations of people in the city.
Novelty: Although Value Engineering has been used to evaluate complex systems, it has never been used to
evaluate the qualities and functionality of a city.
What we will do: This programme of work will therefore take the various functionalities generated in
Sections 3.1 to 3.3 and create a viable new city model based on the multiplex created by this interpretation
of combined functionalities. We will combine the outputs to generate a trajectory that facilitates progress
towards the future by adopting radical assumptions that avoid common city problems (e.g. the problem
where car use rises over time and then requires drastic and difficult interventions to obtain a sustainable
fleet size). These will be examined through various case-studies in comparisons between selected
established and developing societies, e.g. London (where difficult congestion reduction interventions have
been implemented) and Cuba (where a different approach to growth could avoid such problems), to see
how feasible it might be to avoid the need for such difficulties in different contexts.
Output: A multi-dimensional (space-time), multisensorial dynamical engineered model to test future
visions of a city under differing technological, psychological, societal and governance assumptions.
3.5 Claret Book (Cooper) – Months 1-36
Vision: To identify the requirements for, and develop a prototype design of ‘The Claret Book’.
Previous Research: Early work on urban design decision-makingxxiii recognised the gap in knowledge with
regard to urban decision-making processes and the lack of evidence-based decision-making undertaken
throughout the urban lifecycle by public and private sector organisations alike. This work resulted in the
Urban design decision-making processxxiv. This has been reinforced by the TSB’s preparation for the
development of the Future Cities catapult, where they identified a lack of integration and joined up
governance capability in some UK local authorities and need for guidancexxv. In order to develop such a
facility it is clear that requirement capture is needed alongside the design of a prototype system for field
trials. Research into the best approach to requirement capture and product design concludes that this must
be done in a co-creation mode especially where the development of informed process and decision-making
is requiredxxvi to ensure take-up and buy-in. However, this must be done alongside transformational design
thinking and adoption of leading technologies to ensure the final product is sufficiently ‘future effective’.
Novelty: Going beyond the procedure-setting approach adopted by HM Treasury’s Green Book, The Claret
Book will provide a valuable source of multiplexed knowledge on how to develop future cites in an
integrated, informed, dynamic and transformational manner.
What we will do: We will undertake a sophisticated and experimental approach to defining the
requirements for the Claret Book, ranging from a classic survey and interview schedule with the range of
cities decision-makers, to co-creation and user centred Imagination labs bringing together design experts in
creating digital and physical information and guidance systems. We will work with the TSB project
described above to test how the work is integrated and used through this knowledge and guidance
technology. Through this process we will establish the format of the Claret Book, its characteristics and
facilities and develop a prototype for testing with users.
Output: Prototype Claret Book Version 0
4 Management
Management meetings for the CLARET project will be monthly and will usually be virtual. These will be
combined with the management meetings for the TEC programme, involving the PI and Co-PIs: Tyler,
Collins, Bahaj, Cooper and Rogers. Similarly, we will convene six-monthly meetings of the entire
TEC/CLARET research team. Each of the thematic areas will convene its own meetings of researchers on a
monthly basis, organised and run by the team lead in each case. CLARET will make use of the professional
network of some 50 people associated with the TEC programme, but will also convene its own group of
skilled advisors in specific areas of professional expertise where necessary. However, it is important to
ensure, despite the obvious relationship to TEC, that CLARET is independent of TEC, with different
(although complementary) objectives and therefore the Advisory Board will be different from the TEC
Board and will be chaired by Alan Mayo (BIS Lead on Smart Cities).